


Third Time's a Charm

by Enchantable



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Magic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 13:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Ichabod and Katrina kiss in the in between world and one time they do in the waking one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time's a Charm

The first time he kisses her it’s to shut her up.

Not in any perverse way or because he does not want to hear her speak, as always he wants to hear her forever. He kisses her because one moment he is sitting in front of a screen that is a like a tv except you control it and the next there is a barrage of naked images being thrown at him. He’s so outraged he leaps back, tangles his feet in the chair and slams to the ground in a heap of limbs and the only sound in the room is that of the upended chair’s wheels spinning. And then he hears her laugh.

Suddenly he’s face down in the dirt in the in between world and Katrina is in front of him and she is laughing.

Not giving visions or riddles or running from a horned specter. She isn’t laughing lightly either. Not in the way that women were taught to with a few notes behind a hand. No, she is doubled over laughing like her sides are splitting. He staggers to his feet, indignant at her mirth and his own embarrassment. Her hands are around her waist and he brushes his coat off and glares furiously at her.

“I am glad you find this so amusing,” he huffs. “Oh Ichabod,” she laughs around his name, tears making her eyes even brighter.

He purses his lips and she laughs harder.

It’s a beautiful sound.

To him it feels as though its been only a week or so since he heard it but that seems every bit as long as two hundred years. So when her eyes rise up and she’s still grinning but has her bottom lip between her teeth in an effort to stifle the sound, he does the only thing his heart will allow and crosses forward, replacing her teeth with his mouth.

The smile falls as she fists her fingers in his shirt, hauling herself up as he wraps his arms around her frame and pulls her closer. She kisses him rougher, more desperately like its been two hundred years since someone has touched her. Distantly he hears a branch snap and he clutches her closer as she tightens her fingers in his shirt. He thinks it’s to hold him closer but he feels a heat on his chest and then he’s flying back in to his world as Katrina and hers vanish.

He looks up at Abbie Mills’ disapproving face as he gasps unsteadily on the ground with pictures of naked people still plastered on the computer.

He really wishes they weren’t in a library.

The second time he kisses her is in a dream.

He’s getting rather good at keeping dreams and visions separate, though he’s sure they’re very closely related. The nights when he dreams without her are terrible, he would rather wake up gasping and disoriented than not see her at all. Tonight is different though. Tonight he is in clothing he recognizes, clothing that Katrina sewed for him so he could wear something other than his uniform or the rough clothes he sewed for himself.

Katrina is there and the weight he sees in her eyes is gone, she is the Katrina he knew back in his time. His eyes pick out things he would not have seen before. The ash on her fingertips, the spot of mud on her hem, the way her hair is not entirely in the bonnet she’s got on. She’s cleaned herself up, tried to hide the evidence of her craft but he can see the spots she’s missed.

She’s done that for him.

Ichabod is not used to people doing things for him, least of all protecting him. The early days of their marriage were marked by them both trying to do everything and more or less tripping over each other. Like before his eyes find the long, shallow cut on her finger. Unlike before he knows now its from her craft and for the first time he feels anger not at her for lying to him but for the craft in general for hurting here.

"Here," he says, "you’re bleeding."

"Oh, it’s nothing," she says moving her hand away but he catches it.

"Allow me," he says and carefully cleans the cut after she nods.

It’s shallow but he takes care to get the ash out, muttering an apology when she hisses softly at the sting. She holds herself still and back then he simply thought she was ashamed. Now he lays his fingers over her pulse and feels it race and know she’s afraid. He is not sure if it is that she fears him or being discovered, but there is fear in her.

"Katrina—" he begins. "It was nothing," she bursts out, "I must have just gotten it earlier, it will heal in no time and—" she stops as he closes his fingers over her hand.

"I am glad it isn’t worse," he says.

She nods and looks anywhere but him. He waits until her eyes are upon him and then he kisses her again. He keeps his eyes open and watches her features soften as she shifts closer. He pulls her closer and his fingers feel the weight of her dress. Too much weight. But first he reaches up and pulls the bonnet off her head, freeing the tumble of red. It falls against his hands as he buries one in her tresses. Her teeth boldly nip his bottom lip and he pulls back.

She’s still in the dress but he knows its not longer his memory of her. The weight is in her eyes again and though she’s in the dress he can see her shoulder its weight better. He spares a passing thought for the idea that she wears this sort of thing for his benefit more than her own but its gone as she pulls him down and kisses him again. Harder this time, edged with that same desperation. He pulls back and looks down at her, feeling like he’s the unsure one.

"Katrina—" he begins.

"Later, my love," she breathes, "we are safe here."

He nods and kisses her again and backs her up against the long table. He lifts her up and steps in between her legs, kissing her again and again as their fingers tangle together. He thinks of the modern women and how it would be so much easier if she was in one of those dresses instead of the impossible layers of her skirts.

But then she shoves his coat off his shoulders and makes quick work of his tunic and his fingers go on automatic against her skirts. They press together tightly and Ichabod wishes with everything in him that this place would be safe forever and they could stay just like that. When she doesn’t shove him away but stays pressed against him, he realizes he cannot feel her heart. Immediately he chastises himself for why would he? She is not corporeal, not flesh and blood. Still he holds her a bit tighter to him as they linger in the memory of their home. He knows soon he will be fighting then he will be asleep for centuries and she will give everything to save him and watch over him for all that time. He moves back and gently pushes her hair behind her ear.

He doesn’t want to ask but the urge to know is overwhelming. “Would you have told me?” He asks.

She threads their fingers together and suddenly they are out of their house and by the river out back.

It is still and he can see their reflections quite clearly. Katrina looks at him in the river for a long moment and bends down, picking up a rock. Still holding his hand she turns and throws it at a tree, then shows him the long cut on her finger.

"None of the words were right," she admits, her cheeks flushing, "but I kept trying to find them.

He wakes with tears on his cheeks and an ache in his heart for all the struggles his wife went through on his behalf.

Abbie brings him tea and enough honey to make it in to syrup and doesn’t ask questions.

The third time he kisses her he thinks it will be the last time he sees her.

He is in the in between as well now, pursued by a demon. He is there because the demon was after Abbie and he is resolved that no harm will come to his friend. He shoves her out of the way and draws the beasts attention. There’s a ripping sensation in his chest and suddenly he’s in the in between.

Still running, still pursued but he cannot feel his heart in his chest and he knows something is different this time. He runs and runs and runs, drawing the demons attention for Abbie and for Katrina. He can shoulder this burden, or so he thinks until he trips and the beast lunges.

And then Katrina is there.

He has seen her like this before, glimpses of it but now he sees her true power and it is magnificent. He’s spent months with demons and dark creatures, having his mind battered with the truest of evil. So to see so much power, to see so much good, it takes his last assumptions about witchcraft and destroys them in the burst of holy light Katrina throws at the demon.His ears scream with the echo as the beast howls and digs in but is ultimately repelled and thrown far far away. Or so it looks to him.

He scrambles to his feet, resolved that even if he does not have a sword he will fight with his hands, Katrina grabs his shoulders and spins him to her. His eyes widen as she rips open his shirt and lays bear the scar on his chest. Her fingertips drag along it. He sees her eyes fill with tears and his dead heart aches because he knows that she needs him alive. But needs and wants are very different things and there’s a slight tremor as she lays one hand on his chest above his heart and her other low on his ribs. He hears the roar of the beast and looks down at her.

"Stay behind me," he implores.

“You will not tell me to run?” She asks.

"I will not risk losing you again," he says trying to turn but her fingers are like steel on his skin, "Katrina," he looks at her, "for once let me protect you!"

"Oh my love," she looks at him and the tears she’s held back break free, "you cannot," he feels the ground tremble, "goodbye," she chokes out.

He lunges forward and kisses her with everything in him, like he’s the one whose been waiting two hundred years to feel her lips against his. Her fingers are tight and hot against his skin but she does not move her hands and he knows she’s about to save him again, as if she has not already more times than he will ever knows.

"I love you," he breathes against her lips because she needs to know, she needs to hear it.

She nods and her hands slacken before they slam into him with the force of a storm. There’s lightening in his chests, volts of it echoing around his insides and slamming in to his heart and he feels like he’s drawn taut.

He bolts up in the ambulance screaming for his wife who may now be truly lost. T

he first time he kisses her is to bring her back to life.

He does this on the advice of Abbie Mills. They find Katrina underneath the church, preserved in salt and mud and water, a conduit between the river and the cave. Protecting him in every way. He’s covered in mud because he sees the pit and he knows who they will find and trips over his own feet getting there, it has been a week, a week without visions or dreams and the longest week he will ever know.

He dives down and digs through the mud until his fingers find water and the hem of a skirt. She’s cold. That’s his first thought and it is wrong because the only time Katrina is cold is when her mother tells her that is how women show their men they’re upset. And it only lasts for as long as it takes her to find something to throw because Katrina is terrible at it.

He drops to his knees on the bank of the pit with her body in his arms and screams through clenched teeth because he is too late. Damn the world and damn him too, this is not a price Katrina should have to pay. He mops the mud from her face and looks desperately at her body and then up at Abbie.

"Tell me there’s a way," he begs.

Beautiful, brilliant Abbie doesn’t tell him no. She scrubs the tears from her cheeks and looks around with eyes not clouded by emotion. She strides over to the jars that line Katrina’s tomb, hefts the nearest one and slams it against the wall. His fingers tighten on Katrina as he watches, forcing himself to trust Abbie because he knows he cannot move. She breaks every jar as he watches for signs of life on Katrina’s still face.

Only when the last jar smashes does he feel a flutter in her neck. He shoves himself to his knees and lays her down before Abbie can get there and moves his hands like in the video she made him watch. He seals his lips over his wife’s and pushes air in to her lungs for six long breaths before she coughs in to his mouth.Her fingers reach for the tomb and he grabs them, shoving her hand wrist deep in to the mud. There’s a terrific light and a dull echo. When it clears Katrina is breathing but she is still. He crouches by her and looks down, not sure what he is supposed to do.

"You have the stain of her heart," Abbie points out.

"Right, of course," he says and looks at her pointedly

She rolls her eyes and mutters something about him having been here too long for this but turns around anyway. He pulls Katrina in to his lap and leans forward, gently kissing her. He does not know if she’s in pain or not, he doesn’t want to press to hard. There’s that same dull echo and a weight he has not know he’s been carrying seems to vanish and a second later her mouth softens under his and she sighs in to his mouth. He kisses her a moment longer and pulls back to see her open her eyes and look at him.

"You found me," she breathes and if he wasn’t so relieved, Ichabod thinks he would be offended at the relief in her voice.

As it is he can only pull her closer to him and feel the pound of her heart against his, not trusting his voice. Naturally her resurrection is not as flawless as his and she is weak. Or perhaps that weakness is from what she has had to do to survive these seven days. He does not care. He carries her out of the tomb and the church, in to the squad car and all the way to the hospital where, by now, the Sheriff can really do nothing but throw his hands up and demand to know if General Washington is going to be joining them as well. Ichabod sincerely hopes so, the Sheriff could use a lesson in leadership when it comes to the supernatural.

Katrina does not stir until he is given a bowl and a cloth and permitted to get the mud off her skin. Her lashes press to her cheeks and her eyes open, blinking in the dim light of the bedside table. Her eyes immediately go to him and he slides his hand down from her wrist to her fingers. She’s warm but a fever does not mean death anymore. Her lips part and he fumbles one handed to grab the cup of water near her bed. He sees it lift fractionally and looks down at her. Her cheeks flush more and she releases it.

"I know you can do it," he says, picking it up, "but let me help you, please?" He says and though he does not mean for it to come out as a question it does.

She looks at him and he knows what she’s thinking. She is not good at letting people help her and she never has been. Her fingers tremble when they reach for the straw and he tells himself its ridiculous that he feels hurt by the gesture. They fall back to his hand for a moment before he sets the glass on the bedside table and puts the rag in the bowl of water.

"Can you help me to the tub?" She asks suddenly, "I don’t think I can stand."

He nods and helps her to her feet, letting her take a few steps on her own and catching her when her legs buckle. Concern flies through him as he looks down at her and she smiles bravely up at him.

"Did I do something wrong?" He questions.

"No," she says, "I’ve been running for a long time," she admits and he knows she isn’t talking just about the past two hundred years.

"You don’t have to anymore," he says and neither is he.

"I know."

He helps her in to the shower and makes sure the water is alright, like Abbie instructed him to. He waits, sitting on the toilet in case she loses her balance but she doesn’t. When she’s dry and back in her hospital gown he helps her back in to bed. She catches his wrist when he turns to go and for the first time he sees how unsure she is. She isn’t afraid, Katrina rarely is, but she’s nervous. She has no reason to be. He knows he needs to make her see that.

"Will you stay?" She asks.

"Always," he says.

They share her hospital bed as she dozes fitfully and he nudges her awake when the nightmares come. In the end she gets a few hours of peace, tucked securely against his chest. Wisely the nurses steer clear of chastising them for it. Or maybe that’s because in the morning when he sees an exhausted Abbie Mills come in with coffee and doughnuts he realizes she’s been out in front of their door the entire night.

She takes one look at them and meets his eye before setting the bag of doughnut holes on the table for when Katrina wakes up. He tightens his arms around her and hopes she gets a few more hours of sleep.

They come full circle when she does and she tries a jelly filled doughnut for the first time. The look on her face, a peculiar mix of outrage and disgust doubles him over though he does his best to stifle the laughter out of respect for her. She fixes him with that look and when he doesn’t stop she kisses him. She is right though, the jelly filling is pretty awful.

But she tastes like his Katrina so he keeps kissing her.


End file.
